Curriculum By The Numbers

At Davidson College, the core liberal arts curriculum is dedicated to the intellectual and personal growth of students. Our curriculum affirms the intrinsic worth of a broad exposure to intellectual and artistic achievement while striving to nurture students' capacities for knowledge, understanding, judgment and compassion.  

We accomplish this through graduation requirements intended to introduce students to Ways of Knowing, a major of the student's choice, and elective classes in the many disciplines offered. Courses towards a minor or pre-professional track, as well as experiential learning opportunities such as education abroad, internships, jobs and research may also affect course planning. 

Explore Davidson's Graduation Requirements

Explore these scenarios to envision how your choice in major, minor and pre-professional track may affect your curriculum at Davidson. By seeing what may be possible (and which scenarios may be potentially challenging), we hope to minimize students' fatigue while still empowering you to achieve your academic, personal and professional goals. 

The sample scenarios all take the following into account:

• No pre-college credits
• One graduation requirement also fulfills a major requirement
• WRI 101, a graduation requirement, overlaps with one semester of English for premedicine

The total number of courses in each of these examples may be lower if:

• Up to four credits in pre-college work are accepted as transfer work
• Summer/winter terms are taken at Davidson, or elsewhere as transfer work
• Placing higher than the entry level language course via language placement test
• The Cultural Diversity and Justice, Equality, and Community requirements may also fulfill other Ways of Knowing requirements
• More than one Ways of Knowing requirement or other graduation requirements may also fulfill major requirements
• The Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Rhetoric Way of Knowing may also fulfill second semester of English for premedicine requirement